Pragmatic is a philosophy that prioritizes practical solutions over abstract theory and encourages open-mindedness and flexibility in beliefs. It also stresses the importance of achieving concrete results over idealized goals, which can be helpful for organizations that must balance immediate results with long-term impacts. However, critics say that pragmatism’s emphasis on practical outcomes may lead to an underestimation of the role of values and morals in decision-making.
The term pragmatic comes from the 1870s Metaphysical Club, an informal group of Harvard-educated philosophers that included proto-pragmatist Chauncey Wright and future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. While this group didn’t create a formal philosophical movement, its members paved the way for later pragmatists like John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce.
A central tenet of pragmatism is that truth and value are determined in the context in which they are used. This approach allows individuals and businesses to find the best way to achieve their goals while still honoring their values and avoiding moral dilemmas. For example, a company that decides to cut corners or sacrifice quality in order to generate fast profits may ultimately harm its reputation and undermine its ability to meet long-term objectives.
As an academic discipline, pragmatism has a wide range of applications in fields such as psychology, business, and medicine. In education, it emphasizes the importance of real-world experience and encourages students to learn through doing rather than relying on theories alone. In the workplace, pragmatism is often utilized by managers who must balance short-term gains with long-term goals and risks.
One of the most useful tools for pragmatists is pragmatics, which is the study of contextual meaning in communication. This branch of philosophy focuses on how social, cultural, and situational factors impact the meaning of an utterance. It is what helps us understand things like how to politely hedge a request or cleverly read between the lines in conversation. Pragmatics is also the reason we can say things like “that’s not what I meant” when something is ambiguous.
Another tool pragmatists use is relevance theory, which is the idea that all utterances contain enough relevant information to convey their intended meaning to an addressee. This helps us comprehend why a speaker might choose to add extra details to an otherwise straightforward statement such as, “John is inside and he told me to greet you.” It also helps explain how we track syntactic clues in conversation to determine what a person really means when they tell you they are upset.
